Not too Bad!

11th March 2018

Well, I will admit I have had less pleasant days in the Scottish hills. It was a lovely day with light winds and when above a cloud inversion lots of sunshine and great views. There was quite a range of snow conditions, lovely spring snow on Southerly aspects, an icy crust on shady Northerly aspects and wet sticky rhino snot snow when down in the cloud. It was good to see lots of people out enjoying the conditions.

A panorama looking South from the top of Stob an Cul Choire

Climbers about to abseil into Coire an Lochan. The crags in this part of the coire catch a lot of sunshine on a clear day at this time of year, and get get rather on the warm side (particularly given some of the cornices overhanging this area).

A good example of raised footprints.

The Easy Gully serac still hanging on.

Enjoying a quiet moment at the top of Summit gully this morning.

The top of summit gully about an hour and a half later. It was not quite so quiet. The reason for large number of people was there freestyle competition on today.

Looking over to the snowpack on Carn Mor Dearg. The runnels caused by the rainfall a few weeks ago (around the 18/19th of Feb I think) are still visible. In some areas they are covered by drifts or waves of much more recent windslab. This winds slab is generally consolidating in the settled conditions.

Carn Mor Dearg and Ben Nevis looking not too bad.

Coire an Lochan getting a good baking in the sunshine. This was about as high as the cloud got, it started retreating after this picture was taken.

On some shady Northly aspects, such as where I did my snowpit, they was a 2cm thick melt-freeze crust. This section of crust, complete with hole where I had lent on it, stayed intact. Therefore I carried it up into the sunshine, stuck it in the snow, and took a picture of it with Aonach Beag in the background.

Comments on this post

Dan Arnold11th March 2018 6:27 pm

Made an accent of Aonach Mor today- had worse days on the hill! :)

Dorine Tinnion12th March 2018 8:31 pm

Love your ephemeral art installation. Great photo’s – hope it is like that this coming weekend.

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